I’m glad to see you’ve come back for the last part of my July preview list! In case you  missed it, here are Part I and Part II.

Following are the titles that publish the last two weeks of July! Included is the publisher’s summary and a brief reason why I’m excited about that particular title.

Hell Divers by Nicholas Sansbury Smith (July 19):

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search for a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers — men and women who risk their lives by diving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there’s something down there that’s far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past — something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.

Now, if this isn’t my cup of tea I don’t know what is! I’m happy to have an egalley of this one; both my teen son & I can’t wait to read it!

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware  (July 19):

In this tightly wound, enthralling story reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s works, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

With surprising twists, spine-tingling turns, and a setting that proves as uncomfortably claustrophobic as it is eerily beautiful, Ruth Ware offers up another taut and intense read in The Woman in Cabin 10—one that will leave even the most sure-footed reader restlessly uneasy long after the last page is turned.

I read, and loved, Ware’s previous book In A Dark, Dark Wood.   This one sounds similar, in that a woman is in an isolated setting, in this case, a cruise, and something dark and mysterious happens. Sounds like my kind of summer read!

This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell (July 19):

A dazzling novel from best-selling writer Maggie O’Farrell, winner of the Costa Novel Award—an irresistible love story that crisscrosses continents and time zones as it captures an extraordinary marriage, and an unforgettable family, with wit, humor, and deep affection.

Meet Daniel Sullivan, a man with a complicated life. A New Yorker living in the wilds of Ireland, he has children he never sees in California, a father he loathes in Brooklyn, and a wife, Claudette, who is a reclusive ex–film star given to pulling a gun on anyone who ventures up their driveway. Claudette was once the most glamorous and infamous woman in cinema before she staged her own disappearance and retreated to blissful seclusion in an Irish farmhouse.

But the life Daniel and Claudette have so carefully constructed is about to be disrupted by an unexpected discovery about a woman Daniel lost touch with twenty years ago. This revelation will send him off-course, far away from wife, children, and home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?

This Must Be the Place is a novel about family, identity, and true love: an intimately drawn portrait of a marriage, both the forces that hold it together and the pressures that drive it apart. O’Farrell writes with complexity, insight, and laugh-out-loud humor in a narrative that hurtles forward with powerful velocity and emotion. This Must Be the Place is a sophisticated, spellbinding summer read from one of the UK’s most highly acclaimed and best-loved novelists.

I’ve read and adored so many of O’Farrell’s books that now, when I see her name on a title, it’s an instant buy. If you haven’t read any of her books, I highly encourage you to do so!

The Lost Girls by Heather Young (July 26):

In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family—her father commits suicide, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child.

Sixty years later Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine.

For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability—a way to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning. The house is cold and dilapidated. The dark, silent lake is isolated and eerie. Her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more about the summer of 1935 than he’s telling.

Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives to steal her inheritance, and the man she left launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house haunted by the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.

Dark and creepy family secrets. Yep. Definitely my kind of book.

You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott (July 26):

How far will you go to achieve a dream? That’s the question a celebrated coach poses to Katie and Eric Knox after he sees their daughter Devon, a gymnastics prodigy and Olympic hopeful, compete. For the Knoxes there are no limits–until a violent death rocks their close-knit gymnastics community and everything they have worked so hard for is suddenly at risk.

As rumors swirl among the other parents, Katie tries frantically to hold her family together while also finding herself irresistibly drawn to the crime itself. What she uncovers–about her daughter’s fears, her own marriage, and herself–forces Katie to consider whether there’s any price she isn’t willing to pay to achieve Devon’s dream.

From a writer with “exceptional gifts for making nerves jangle and skin crawl” (Janet Maslin), You Will Know Me is a breathless rollercoaster of a novel about the desperate limits of parental sacrifice, furtive desire, and the staggering force of ambition.

Megan Abbot. I mean, that’s really all I have to say, right?  My dog is so excited about it that he devoured it (ok, the cover) in one sitting.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (July 26):

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

It starts with a man in a mask kidnapping him at gunpoint, for reasons Jason can’t begin to fathom—what would anyone want with an ordinary physics professor?—and grows even more terrifying from there, as Jason’s abductor injects him with some unknown drug and watches while he loses consciousness.

When Jason awakes, he’s in a lab, strapped to a gurney—and a man he’s never seen before is cheerily telling him “welcome back!”

Jason soon learns that in this world he’s woken up to, his house is not his house. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born.

And someone is hunting him.

Is the life Jason remembers just some crazed dream? And can he survive long enough to discover the answers he needs?

Blake Crouch wrote the brilliant and amazing Pines series (adapted into the Wayward Pines series on FOX). I’m thrilled to see something new from this author. Give it a try; I guarantee you won’t forget it. 

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty (July 26): 

Sam and Clementine have a wonderful, albeit, busy life: they have two little girls, Sam has just started a new dream job, and Clementine, a cellist, is busy preparing for the audition of a lifetime. If there’s anything they can count on, it’s each other.

Clementine and Erika are each other’s oldest friends. A single look between them can convey an entire conversation. But theirs is a complicated relationship, so when Erika mentions a last minute invitation to a barbecue with her neighbors, Tiffany and Vid, Clementine and Sam don’t hesitate. Having Tiffany and Vid’s larger than life personalities there will be a welcome respite.

Two months later, it won’t stop raining, and Clementine and Sam can’t stop asking themselves the question:What if we hadn’t gone?

In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don’t say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm.

I was thrilled beyond belief to pick up a galley of this one at BEA. Moriarty excels at writing truly captivating novels!

Ok, that’s it! My most anticipated titles of July! Which ones are you most excited about!? Which titles did I miss?

I’m baaack, and with more books! Earlier this week, I shared the first part of my July preview list. Were you one of the fortunate who earned ebook credits from the settlement? Time to spend that money!

Following are the titles that publish the second week of July!

The Light of Paris by Eleanor Brown (July 12)

Madeleine has always felt like a failure: She’s the one whose expression ruins sorority photos, the person at parties who would rather be at home reading, the old maid at the age of thirty. Spending her entire life trying to fit in has only left her looking like she has everything, but feeling like she has nothing. At first when her marriage to controlling, critical Phillip is threatened, Madeleine panics. But when she discovers a journal detailing her grandmother’s wild, romantic summer in Jazz Age Paris, she begins to wonder if there is more to life than playing by someone else’s rules.

Madeleine has always thought her grandmother was exactly like her mother, and like the woman she was supposed to be—stiff, formal, elegant, untouchable. But reading the journal introduces Madeleine to a woman she never knew: a dreamy writer who defied her staid family’s expectations and spent an exhilarating summer in Paris in 1924, writing in cafés, finding work at the American library, and falling in love with a dashing young artist. Inspired by her grandmother’s story, and floored by a long-kept secret she finds in its pages, Madeleine begins to create her own Parisian summer on a visit to her mother back in her old hometown—rediscovering her love of painting, cultivating a vibrant circle of creative friends, and falling into a relationship with a down-to-earth chef who feeds her chocolate, encourages her to be true to herself, and makes her question the miserable perfection of her marriage and her life.

 

ELEANOR BROWN! Ahhh! I adored adored adored The Weird Sisters (so much so that I actually wrote two reviews), so when I received a review copy in the mail I did a celebrated by running through my house, book clutched to my chest, quite reminiscent of the field scene from The Sound of Music. The author, the premise, everything. I cannot wait to devour this book.

All Is Not Forgotten: A Novel   by Wendy Walker (July 12)

In the small, affluent town of Fairview, Connecticut, everything seems picture perfect.

Until one night when young Jenny Kramer is attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But, in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory. Her father, Tom, becomes obsessed with his inability to find her attacker and seek justice while her mother, Charlotte, prefers to pretend this horrific event did not touch her perfect country club world.

As they seek help for their daughter, the fault lines within their marriage and their close-knit community emerge from the shadows where they have been hidden for years, and the relentless quest to find the monster who invaded their town – or perhaps lives among them – drive this psychological thriller to a shocking and unexpected conclusion.

This book just recently showed up in the mail and I can’t wait to start reading. Comparisons to Gone Girl aside, this sounds like a phenomenal premise. Also, it’s already been optioned for film.  This is going to be a big book!

Everything I Don’t Remember by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (July 12):

A young man named Samuel dies in a horrible car crash. Was it an accident or was it suicide? To answer that question, an unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to map Samuel’s last day alive. Through conversations with friends, relatives, and neighbors, a portrait of Samuel emerges: the loving grandchild, the reluctant bureaucrat, the loyal friend, the contrived poseur. The young man who did everything for his girlfriend Laide and shared everything with his best friend Vandad. Until he lost touch with them both.

By piecing together an exhilarating narrative puzzle, we follow Samuel from the first day he encounters the towering Vandad to when they become roommates. We meet Panther, Samuel’s self-involved childhood friend whose move to Berlin indirectly cues the beginning of Samuel’s search for the meaning of love—which in turn leads Samuel to Laide. Soon, Samuel’s relationship with Laide leads to a chasm in his friendship with Vandad, and it isn’t long before the lines between loyalty and betrayal, protection, and peril get blurred irrevocably.

Everything I Don’t Remember is a gripping tale about love and memory. But it is also a story about a writer who, by filling out the contours of Samuel’s story, is actually trying to grasp a truth about himself. In the end, what remains of all our fleeting memories? And what is hidden behind everything we don’t remember? Told with Khemiri’s characteristic stylistic ingenuity, this is an emotional roller coaster ride of a book that challenges us to see ourselves—and our relationships to the closest people in our lives—in new and sometimes shocking ways.

What a premise, right? This has been compared to Serial. I think it will do quite fine on its own merit!

Life Debt: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig (July 12):

Set between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, the never-before-told story that began with Star Wars: Aftermath continues in this thrilling novel, the second book of Chuck Wendig’s New York Times bestselling trilogy.

It is a dark time for the Empire. . . .

The Emperor is dead, and the remnants of his former Empire are in retreat. As the New Republic fights to restore a lasting peace to the galaxy, some dare to imagine new beginnings and new destinies. For Han Solo, that means settling his last outstanding debt, by helping Chewbacca liberate the Wookiee’s homeworld of Kashyyyk.

Meanwhile, Norra Wexley and her band of Imperial hunters pursue Grand Admiral Rae Sloane and the Empire’s remaining leadership across the galaxy. Even as more and more officers are brought to justice, Sloane continues to elude the New Republic, and Norra fears Sloane may be searching for a means to save the crumbling Empire from oblivion. But the hunt for Sloane is cut short when Norra receives an urgent request from Princess Leia Organa. The attempt to liberate Kashyyyk has carried Han Solo, Chewbacca, and a band of smugglers into an ambush—resulting in Chewie’s capture and Han’s disappearance.

Breaking away from their official mission and racing toward the Millennium Falcon’s last known location, Norra and her crew prepare for any challenge that stands between them and their missing comrades. But they can’t anticipate the true depth of the danger that awaits them—or the ruthlessness of the enemy drawing them into his crosshairs.

My teen son and I are fighting over who gets to read this one first. I think we may need to get a second copy!

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon (July 12)

England, 1976. Mrs. Creasy is missing and the Avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbors blame her sudden disappearance on the heat wave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren’t convinced. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, the girls decide to take matters into their own hands. Inspired by the local vicar, they go looking for God—they believe that if they find Him they might also find Mrs. Creasy and bring her home.

Spunky, spirited Grace and quiet, thoughtful Tilly go door to door in search of clues. The cul-de-sac starts to give up its secrets, and the amateur detectives uncover much more than ever imagined. As they try to make sense of what they’ve seen and heard, a complicated history of deception begins to emerge. Everyone on the Avenue has something to hide, a reason for not fitting in.

In the suffocating heat of the summer, the ability to guard these differences becomes impossible. Along with the parched lawns and the melting pavement, the lives of all the neighbors begin to unravel. What the girls don’t realize is that the lies told to conceal what happened one fateful day about a decade ago are the same ones Mrs. Creasy was beginning to peel back just before she disappeared.

I just love the premise of this one! Two young, inquisitive girls embarking on an investigation.  It sounds like something I would have done at their age. Coming of age meets mystery? I’m sold. 

Baby Doll by Hollie Overton (July 12):

Escape was just the beginning.

The Last One by Alexandra Oliva (July 12):

She wanted an adventure. She never imagined it would go this far.

It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game.

Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all of her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes.

But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will either be her triumph or her undoing.

Sophisticated and provocative, harrowing and surprising, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real—how readily we cast our judgments, and how easily we are manipulated.

Chilling right? My interest is piqued; I can’t wait to get this one!

I was neglect in creating preview posts for June (thanks to my crazy schedule, BEA, etc.) so I knew i couldn’t be remiss in sharing July titles that piqued my attention.  July is quite a month for books, leaving me wondering why adults don’t get a summer break!? Wouldn’t it be divine to have the summer off for reading?

I’ve shared the book titles, publication dates, publisher’s summary and a short note about why I’m excited about the book. This first list includes the books published the first week of July.

The Long, Hot Summer by Kathleen MacMahon (July 5):

Nine Lives. Four Generations. One Family. The MacEntees are no ordinary family.

Determined to be different from other people, they have carved out a place for themselves in Irish life by the sheer force of their personalities.

There’s Deirdre, the aged matriarch and former star of the stage. Her estranged writer husband Manus now lives with a younger man. Their daughter Alma is an unapologetically ambitious television presenter, while Acushla plays the part of the perfect political wife. And there’s Macdara, the fragile and gentle soul of the family. Together, the MacEntees present a glamorous face to the world. But when a series of misfortunes befall them over the course of one long, hot summer, even the MacEntees will struggle to make sense of who they are.

I’m all about multi-generational stories. The characters in this story sound quite unique, furthering my interest in reading this title!

Belgravia by Julian Fellowes (July 5):

From the creator and writer of Downton Abbey comes a grand historical novel, with hugely exciting twists and turns and dramatic, cliffhanger chapter endings.

Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia is the story of a secret. A secret that unravels behind the porticoed doors of London’s grandest postcode. Set in the 1840s when the upper echelons of society began to rub shoulders with the emerging industrial nouveau riche, Belgravia is people by a rich cast of characters. But the story begins on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. At the Duchess of Richmond’s n0w legendary ball, one family’s life will change forever.

Like many, I’m a huge fan of Downton Abbey. I was sad when it ended, but thrilled when this title appeared on my doorstep!

The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone (July 5):

An astonishingly inventive and terrifying debut novel about the emergence of an ancient species, dormant for over a thousand years, and now on the march.

Deep in the jungle of Peru, where so much remains unknown, a black, skittering mass devours an American tourist whole. Thousands of miles away, an FBI agent investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Kanpur, India earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. During the same week, the Chinese government “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. As these incidents begin to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at a Washington, D.C. laboratory. Something wants out.

The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake.

Need I say more? Terrifying ancient species, dormant for a thousand years, now awake? Yep, this is right up my alley. There’s been so much praise and marketing for this book. I cannot wait. 

Underground Airlines by Ben Winters (July 5):

 Last Words by Michael Koryta (July 5): 

Mark Novak just wants to come home. Still mourning the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak accepts a case that may be his undoing. On the same day his wife died, the body of a teenage girl was pulled from the extensive and perilous cave system beneath Southern Indiana. Now the man who rescued the girl, who was believed to be her killer, begs Novak to uncover what really happened.

Garrison is much like any place in America, proud and fortified against outsiders. For Mark to delve beneath the town’s surface, he must match wits with the man who knows the caverns better than anyone. A man who seems to have lost his mind. A man who seems to know Mark Novak all too well. LAST WORDS is a pulse-pounding thriller of one man’s undoing; you just may not know which man.

Koryta’s books are ones I look forward to each year.  A former private investigator and newspaper reporter, he has a way of creating incredibly unique thrillers.  He immerses himself in his writing, acting out scenes he writes for his characters in order to provide an accurate and genuine portrayal of that scene.